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Carnegie Mellon University

Software Engineering Institute

Anita Carleton

SEI Fellow and Director of the Software Solutions Division

Anita Carleton was named as an SEI Fellow in 2024 for her work in improving modern software engineering practice worldwide, with her most notable contributions in software measurement, statistical process control for software, and the development of a software engineering research and development roadmap. Carleton’s work has consistently provided SEI stakeholders with a strategic advantage in software.

Her early work helped to establish the SEI as a leader in software measurement and practice through her research and contributions to the SEI Core Measures. She led the creation of innovative approaches to the software engineering lifecycle that significantly impacted the field. Examples of this impact include the development and transition of the widely adopted Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), as well as the Team Software Process (TSP) and the Personal Software Process (PSP), which established popular methods for developing high-quality software and high-performance teams. These frameworks have been used as benchmarks throughout the software industry worldwide—not only as part of U.S. government policy, but also as a primary input to the constructive cost model (COCOMO) developed by Dr. Barry Boehm at the University of Southern California.

While at the SEI, Carleton’s work with IBM on applying statistical process control to space shuttle software data was seminal in motivating the application of advanced statistical techniques in software engineering. This work and research resulted in the development and publication of the book, Measuring the Software Process: Statistical Process Control for Software Process Improvement.

Most recently, Carleton exercised an influential role in defining a software engineering research and development roadmap as part of a national agenda study, which culminated in a publication titled Architecting the Future of Software Engineering: A National Agenda for Software Engineering Research & Development. Research organizations around the world are now pursuing the goals of this agenda, it is being taught in graduate and undergraduate curricula, and it is motivating research initiatives and investment actions by the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Carleton currently serves as a key member of the SEI’s Executive Leadership Team and as the Division Director of the Software Solutions Division, where she is leading a team to concentrate efforts in five areas of research, development, and transition: engineering intelligent software systems, assuring cyber-physical systems, enabling Department of Defense mission capability at scale, modernizing software development and acquisition with DevSecOps and Agile methods, and transforming software acquisition policy and practice. While the software ecosystem continues to dramatically change through new technologies such as large language models and generative AI techniques and commercial investments in software, Carleton and her team continue to work with researchers worldwide to build on these enduring software engineering tenets.

Carleton is an IEEE Fellow, chairs the IEEE Software Advisory Board, and served as the General Chair of the International Conference on Software & Systems Processes 2022. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where she was the recipient of the MIT Sloan Leadership Fellowship.

Selected Publications

Books and Book Chapters

Selected Journal Articles

  • “Five Critical Challenges for Software and AI Engineering.” Mar 15, 2024. Crosstalk: The Journal of Defense Software Engineering. Anita Carleton, Doug Schmidt, Forrest Shull, John Roberts, and Ipek Ozkaya. https://community.apan.org/cfs-file/__key/docpreview-s/00-00-29-22-66/Generations-in-Software-Feb-2024-_2D00_-final.pdf
  • “Architecting the Future of Software Engineering.” Computer, Volume 55, Issue 9, 2022. A. Carleton, F. Shull, E. Harper.
  • “A Research Road Map for Building Secure and Resilient Software-Intensive Systems.” Oct 28, 2021. IEEE Security & Privacy, Volume: 19, Issue: 6. Robert Cunningham, Anita D. Carleton, Tom Longstaff, and Forrest J. Shull. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=9592736&punumber=8013
  • “Expert Perspectives on AI.” Jun 19, 2020. IEEE Software, Volume: 37, Issue: 4. Anita D. Carleton, Erin Harper, Michael R. Lyu, Sigrid Eldh, Tao Xie, and Tim Menzies. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=9121610&punumber=52
  • “The AI Effect: Working at the Intersection of AI and SE.” Jun 19, 2020. IEEE Software, Volume: 37, Issue: 4. Anita D. Carleton, Erin Harper, Tim Menzies, Tao Xie, Sigrid Eldh, and Michael R. Lyu.
  • “The Future of Software Engineering.” Dec 19, 2019. IEEE Software. Volume: 33, Issue: 1. Forrest Shull, Anita Carleton, Jeromy Carriere, Rafael Prikladnicki, and Dongmei Zhang. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7367988
  • “Statistical Process Control: Analyzing a Space Shuttle Onboard Software Process.” IEEE Software, Jul/Aug 2000. William Florac, Anita Carleton, and Julie Barnard.
  • “Statistical Process Control—Can the Concepts be Applied to Software?” American Society for Quality, Aug 1999. Anita Carleton and William Florac.
  • “Transition Packages: An Experiment in Expediting the Introduction of Requirements Management.” Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, 1998. P. Fowler, M. Patrick, A. Carleton, B. Merrin.
  • “The SEI Core Measures.” The Journal of the Quality Assurance Institute, Jul 1994. Anita Carleton, Dr. Robert Park, and Wolfhart Goethert.
  • “The SEI Core Measures: Background Information and Recommendations for Use and Implementation.” CrossTalk, May 1994. Anita Carleton, Dr. Robert Park, and Wolfhart Goethert.
  • “Seven +/- Two Software Measurement Conundrums.” Proceedings of the Second International Software Metrics Symposium. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1994. Bill Curtis & Anita Carleton.

Foundational CMU SEI Publications in Software Process and Measurement